#ez09 - Prisma Presse and eZ Publish 3 years In

By Leigh Gable | Published Jun 26, 2009

Julien Pauthier presented an review of Prisma Presse's adoption of eZ Publish. Prisma Presse is the second largest media group in France with 20 print magazines and numerous editorial websites. In 2006, Prisma had no strictly on-line editorial, and the various sites were classic in-line PHP implementations, each publishing content in a catch as catch can manner.

Casting an eye over the scene, Prisma decided they needed a centralized Web CMS solution which would be scalable (but they weren't certain to what extent), modular and based on common technology that is supported by most hosting providers (i.e., LAMP).

As the editorial staff did not have a preference for the content structure, they also wanted something which solidly organized the content. Prisma decided that an open-source solution would fit their bill. Interestingly (and oddly), Prisma thought scalability would be less of an issue with open source, due to the non-proprietary nature of the CMS.

After an initial period of testing, Prisma went on-line with major sites (gala.fr, voici.fr) working from a centralized eZ Publish based CMS. Initial challenges included increased hosting costs (voici.fr receives 225,000 UV/day), and difficulty finding external expertise and support.

Internally, setting up their CMS required formalizing their editorial workflow, establishing restrictive development guidelines, and an estimated 6-month period to bring an experienced PHP developer up to speed with the eZ Publish CMS.

Some of the ways Potier has seen the installation pay off for Prisma are in reduced maintenance and support costs due to centralization, a shorter roll out time for new sites (femmes.com was brought out by Prisma in 40 workday man-hours), and a reduction in training hours for editorial staff due to the shared backoffice among all their sites.